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The Handmaid's Tale By Margaret Atwood

588 Words3 Pages

Savonne Andrews Ms.Milliner EEs21QH-02 10/19/16 The novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a story which showcases an oppressed society named Gilead. Gilead’s society is a result of a war the United States participated in causing the country to regress to into a religious less free society. Throughout this book the biggest theme is the weakness of women within Gilead’s society. Woman in this society are ranked through a hierarchy creating several classes which all are restricted in many aspects. In this society individuality is ultimately terminated and life can only be lived properly through obeying laws without questioning. Offred, the female narrator of this story, is very frustrated having to put up with this society. Due to her frustrations she uses language through her narration to eliminate the values of this society as well as her existence. …show more content…

Throughout the book Offred constantly imagines if Gilead were just a dream or what luxuries the people she previously cared about may be living in their new society. She states “I feel drugged. I consider this: maybe they’re drugging me. Maybe the life I think I’m living is a paranoid illusion. Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is.”(Atwood 109) This text shows that Offred likes to believe in possibilities that her life is not what it seems and that she can escape this society through her mind. However, she also realizes that her brief thoughts of escape are ultimately pointless and that her reality is something she cannot

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Atwood establishes militaristic and rigid settings in Gilead to emphasise the totalitarian regulation and lack of freedom within such a society, "Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods," using evocative animalistic imagery and prison-like descriptions, "Army cots that had been set up in rows, without spaces between so we could not talk," to show the dehumanising effects of such oppressive societies in order to consolidate supreme control. The Handmaids, as such, become dehumanised to the collective identity of mass-bred "cattle", representing their value to society merely being attributed to their sexual function. In order to consolidate the oppressive regimes, Atwood comments on the way those in power use fear as a method of silencing, marginalising and manipulating individuals from transgressing their socially prescribed roles. Atwood presents Gilead as a totalitarian regime that regulates its citizens through surveillance. This is portrayed through the symbol of the 'eyes'.

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